Marketing consultant Robert Craven, who started the debate, said: “The majority of [accountants I speak] to are only interested in battening down the hatches and hoping that they can survive without too much pain.”

Mr Craven said many accountancy firms have cut or frozen their marketing budgets in response to the recession, but haven’t switched to more cost-effective forms of lead generation now. He said many firms were showing “no interest” in winning new business. “One accountant said, ‘I can tell you that marketing doesn’t work for us so we try not to do any’.”

Peter Lashmar, owner of accountancy firm Lashmars UK, agreed with Mr Craven’s assessment, and argued the general lack of proactivity in the industry provides an opportunity for his business: “We are delighted that the majority of the accountancy profession does not know about or bother with effective marketing as it enables us to grow significantly each year without any real effort or cost.”

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Jeremy Thorn, a non-executive director of AIM-listed engineering company Elektron plc, said: “I am consistently fascinated how so many excellent professional-services organisations see marketing, management development and organisational development, or even wider business strategy and business development, as being so readily within their undoubted intellectual grasp that they have no idea of what they don’t know.”

Julian Rowe, of accountant locator site Accountant Now said the profession’s lack of marketing nous was concerning since “these accountants are no doubt currently acting as advisers to many clients who count on them for advice”.

Some members suggested the attitude of accountants towards their own sales and marketing budgets had led to unnecessarily aggressive cost-cutting advice being given to business owners in some cases.

George Gibbons, a logistics adviser, said: “The first thing you do in a recession should be to increase sales. But, rather stupidly and short-sightedly, what really happens is that the sales budget and sales people are let go.”

John Hill, owner of sales consultancy Hunter Stuckey Marshall said: “That is what happens when accountants have too much power, and directors allow them that.”

However, he added that it is also the responsibility of small businesses to improve their relationship with their accountant. “Why do the majority of small and medium-sized businesses in the UK try to keep their accounting costs as low as possible?” he asked.

Professional services companies often try to position themselves as proactive business advisers, but business owners said this didn’t sit well with the reactive, “time selling” approach they take to winning new business.

Mr Craven said: “It is time that many of these time-sellers wake up and smell the coffee and start to sell results.”

Tony Gimple, chief executive of Crisis Survivor, said a proactive approach to sales and service was not one many entrepreneurs would recognise. “Most vocation based professions such as law and accountancy only provide answers to questions asked and do not [or] cannot take a wider proactive brief. In the main, accountants and solicitors are selling time, and most [small businesses] won’t pay for proactivity.”

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